As an author of westerns, I figured I'd better put a bunch of interesting facts and fiction concerning the historical west on the web. This blog does that. It will include poetry, fiction, factual articles and links, and as much western color as I can muster. Have a fun read.

About Me

永年コピライターをしてから引退をしました。2005年にニュージーランドへ渡りヨットを自作。単独の世界一周に出港。難破。船を亡くしたが命が助かった。それから小説作家の道へ。現在では10冊目が売れ、11冊目に取りかかる所。頑張ります。
Although I write Western novels as Chuck Tyrell, I've been a magazine and newspaper journalist for more than 30 years. I'm interested in the effect sports have on the lives of physically challenged athletes (we call them paralympians) and have started a blog about them. I also have a blog in Japanese on the eternal enigma of learning English.

Thursday, July 11, 2013

A Western in 30 Days--non-Day

This is not a photo of the author

Today was a client day, with little time left for working on the novel. The first chapter is nearly finished, however, with close to 2500 words on the clock. Tomorrow, if I'm lucky and I don't succumb to heat prostration, I'll give you the beginning of Chapter Two, but not the conclusion. Can't give away any secrets, can we?

For your entertainment, here's a little story.

A Wish

Exercise, Dr. Motoyama says, lose weight or your family will lose you. Walk, she says (Dr. Motoyama's a woman), walk every day. So I don
my Nikes and walk down twenty-three steps to the roadway. It's eleven at night.
The neighborhood is silent, but not dark. Streetlights
illuminate the tarmac, the tiny yards, the front doors. There are no sidewalks.
Concrete utility poles stick up from asphalt streets like dead trees. Geraniums
and pansies hang from fences in planter boxes. Wisteria arc over gateway
frames. A dog voices his irritation at my late-night passage.

summer night

with no moon

fresh-cut grass

I dodge the barriers and walk beside by the creek. I say
creek, but I cannot see it. Brick-paved pathways run down either side, and the
water trickles toward the bay, bordered by iron sheet piles. What once was a
swampy creek bed is now a suburban residential neighborhood, and, deep within
an iron-bound canyon, the gummy water of the creek, full of detergents and
waste and filth, rarely sees the sun.

A man, with all his possessions strapped to an aged bicycle,
spreads cardboard on a creekside bench, his bed tonight. He pulls the brim of
his hat low to shade his eyes from the glare of the streetlights that keep the
pathways safe at night. I walk past as if he is not there.

Farther on, a housewife huddles over her cell phone. I
wonder why she's come outside to talk. Illicit conversation? She speaks so low
that I can hear none of what she says as I pass. I turn the corner, circle
back, and the same dog barks again.